


Earth-2287

by urtin



Category: Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas, X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Brotherhood of Steel - Freeform, Depression, Domestic Fluff, Domesticity, Eating Stuff That Is Not Supposed To Be Eaten, Fictional Radiation, Fictional Religion & Theology, Fictional science, Gunners, Homophobia, Jazz Music, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Malnutrition, Minutemen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-war culture, Pre-war technology, Robots, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow To Update, Talks about drugs, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence, railroad, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2020-11-27 06:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20943488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urtin/pseuds/urtin
Summary: X-Men movieverse characters in the Fallout 4 Universe - The AU. Erik is a Sole Survivor of the Vault 111, who lost his wife and searches for his son. Charles is... well, he's still a scientist, a doctor and a bright soul, who helps people. They collide during one of Erik's missions outside Boston.I will describe anything you need to know about Fallout 4 throughout the fic, you don’t need to be familiar with its universe to read it. The concept sits on my hard drive for good three years already and I was skeptical about finally publishing it, but decided to give it a try.





	1. Awakening

Maybe there's a God above,  
And all I ever learned from love  
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you  
“Hallelujah”

***

What does a child know about war? A child doesn't wait for war, doesn't want it, doesn't start it. Rulers own the power and land, and protect what they own at all costs. Power and control doesn’t belong to you, instead you have to live through the nightmare and move on. 

The war comes one morning with the financial news, just before the weather. And this is the day you must rise and defend your country. Whenever you are, whatever you do, and whatever career you originally chose for yourself. You are a soldier now, child. War doesn't wait for anyone to become an adult. When the threat comes, it doesn’t care for those who resist, it grabs everything at once: land, people and their power. 

At the end of the day, If you happen to stay alive, you are proud of your country. But in the end, it’s always about people: people in the letters, people on the frontline, people on the military plants. People are dying, but the victory always goes to the Government. 

Be proud of yourself, soldier. You won the war right that moment you didn’t run from it. You are the power, you are control, you are a part of the land the Government owns. You are the defender, you are a survivor. 

***

What makes a good man? 

Honesty. The first step in dealing with a problem is to understand your boundaries. A man who knows his limits is a honest and wise one. A clever man knows when he needs to stop. 

Bravery. Some say there are two types of people: a man of action and some windbags. Acceptance. It takes bravery and honesty to accept a fact that you can't do something.  
  
At this point, Erik must’ve learned his speech by heart. Still, there was something unsettling about it. In a couple of hours he needs to speak on behalf of all the soldiers. His speech had to make a connection between future recruits and him, it had to symbolize hope for a better future. The country was celebrating a victory of a battle, but the army was in high demand of recruits.  
  


“Everything will be just alright. Don’t be nervous. This speech is just a formality.” 

“You just trying to calm me down.” 

“Duh, you can achieve everything you want, if you’re calm and collected.” His wife smiled at 

him brightly, and put her hand on his shoulder. 

“Thank you, dear.” Erik leaned in and kissed his wife in a cheek. 

On a distance, he heard Peter crying and Codsworth asking for Magda. And again, Erik tried to rehearse his speech, but the more he spoke, the less concentrated he becomes. 

Erik was a good soldier, with a very suitable profile for an army. He believed in his country and rarely questioned orders he was given. Anybody could be on his place, but by pure chance the accident happened to him. It's not a lack of training, it's not his fault. Erik didn't believe in mental illnesses. It's a sick joke to get more money for curing imaginable issues. 

Erik wrote to his mother, but letters got to her very slowly. Once there’s been a delay, and news about bombs in Europe came faster. Erik has never got any letter from her. 

Once a month, Erik got a package with essentials. Nothing special: some vitamins, chocolate, matches and cigarettes. They were usually brought by the with letters. This time, there was something else. On a small pocket of sugar was scribed a few words ‘thank you’. 

Her name was Magda, she worked as a volunteer on a military facility, packed essentials for soldiers. The other time she packed a small note and got an answer back. So he found the package and wrote on the facility to the girl. He even bribed a postman with a newly invented life-saving medicine – stimpack – only allowed in military these times, so the postman would hide letters from the censors. Two years later, when he returned home, they met up and got married to the shock of her parents all his friends.  
  
Sometimes Erik wondered, what happens with the Soviets – such big country couldn’t just disappear in a couple of blasts. European Commonwealth’ politicians went down before the conflict with Alaska. Erik didn't really care what happened to the politicians at this point, but people surely can handle themselves in any matter, a lot of refugees was seeking a shelter in annexed Canada. The mood was grim, everyone was waiting for something to happen. But what can wish a man that went through war and death? Only peace. Erik was scared to wake up to another day of war. They had no time and they didn't know about it.  
  
The war was over - those who started it was already dead. It seems like there's only Erik, but he wasn't alone - the ghosts of better life and hope always followed him wherever he went.  
  
There are two dates that Erik remembers better, than his own birthday. 23rd of October, 2077 The day when the Great War started and he was closed in the vault, and 23rd of October 2287 – the day woke up in a nightmare. 

It's dark around him and he fights himself to open his eyes. Everything hurts so much, every gulp of air makes him feel pain in his throat. Erik had broken ribs before, but it's worse, it's deeper, somewhere in his lungs. Every breath is an achievement, but he cannot stop gulping the air. 

He woke up because of the noise, someone is shouting and the siren is ringing in his ears. He manages to open his eyes just in time when someone looks at him from the other side of his capsule. 

Cryopod. Bombs. Magda. Right. He's safe, everyone's safe. 

People, some people open his wife's capsule. Is is some kind of doctors check-in? He's so thirsty, he's so tired. He needs to raise a hand, he needs to ask if his wife and his child are alright. Next thing he registers: child's cry, then shouting and a shot. No, it can't be. 

The system is restored, please stand by for resetting system. 

The system is restored... 

They are taking Peter away, he can't move, he can't find his voice. The automatic message still plays on a background, when the dark draws on him again. 

The sirens are so loud, Erik can’t hear his own heartbeat. The sirens was always the most frightening thing on the war. 

Malfunction in emergency exit door override. Please contact your Vault-Tec... 

The door of his cryopod has opened by itself. Because of the fire? But there’s no smoke, there’s no panic and there’s no people. He blindly goes forward, to open his wife's pod, but he already sees frozen blood on her chest. He wants to believe is was an awful nightmare, but it was no dream at all. 

"Wake up." He tells himself, and pinches a side of a hand, but nothing happens. The sirens are going off, the room is empty and nobody's shooting at him. And Magda's cold eyes are looking through the glass. Her face is so white and shiny, like a newly lacquered carnival mask. Dead. She's dead. This is no dream. Of all the things he had dreamed after the war, this must be the hardest one he had to wake up to. 

They killed her. Whoever these people were, they killed Magda and took his son away. The room started spinning around and he threw out on the floor. There wasn’t much, but it shook his insides and tears started running from his eyes. He barely saw the outlines of things before him. 

The floor hit his knees when he slipped down, a cold shiver ran through his members. 

His hands were too weak to cooperate, so he let go, and buried his face onto them. Alive. Alive. He couldn't understand where did everyone else go. What if the Chinese sabotaged the whole thing? He had to leave this place immediately. 

"Wake up!" He wants to shout again, but it's too hard to even take another breath – it hurts and scratches. The feeling still lasts, squishing his insides into a tug, but nothing comes out again, except of tears out of his eyes. He raises a hand, trying to catch a handle of the pod, and helps himself up. He smacks his head into the door of the pod, but it just send more pain through his skull. 

He goes down the hall. Through the windows in the hall, he sees a next room, and it's there're huge cockroaches. Erik doesn't remember much from biology, but when he checked the last time, biggest bugs in Massachusetts was a centimeter in high. Things he sees now are the size of a small dog. He's barely holds himself upright, his head feels heavy and there’s a buzzing sound in his left ear. He sits on a metal crate and takes some time to sort out things. He’s still buzzed from rude awakening, there’s an emergency in a vault and he really needs out. The air is stale. Smells of water and all the bad things. But first thing first – these oversized bugs. 

After half an hour and another panic attack, he makes it to the entrance hall still shaking and barely standing upwards. Bugs were actually tried to eat him, but he managed to run away. Another skeleton in a white coat here. He had found several, while wandering through the corridors in search for a way out. This skeleton has a white coat and something on his wrist. 

Erik couldn't believe his eyes - a Pip-boy! Personal Information Processor! He’d seen them only in the army and in this vault, the day they evacuated here. It was a piece of the newest tech of its time with its capability to store large amounts of information and transfer data to and from holodisks. 

He took it from the floor and wiped it from a layer of dust. He tried side button, then another one, until he had found the switch – it actually worked. It took a minute for pip-boy to load, but now Erik had a better chance to see the sun and to breathe fresh air. There was a switch on a wire, that could override an emergency door. Not wasting another minute, he came to the control panel and found a switch. Lights went up and the siren of a heavy door – the only siren he actually wanted to hear now. He was finally free. 

He looks at the screen of a pip-boy again and reality hits him again. It shows the year 2287 – two hundred years after he stepped in the vault 111. 

He goes home the same way they ran to the vault. Thirst got to him and he sat near the small spring. Breathing became easier, since he got on a surface. He ignored Geiger counter for now and let himself drink as much as he wanted. 

Where should you start looking, when everything you knew has turned into dust? Every building is a community, every corner is somebody's home. Every other house became somebody's grave and his is the biggest – six levels drowned under the surface. 

Erik was walking corpse – his son was waiting for him somewhere. He was alive after the world was gone. He was alive, alive, but it didn’t make it better. In the end he’s too weak to walk around his old block that he just fell asleep in a chair in the middle of a ruined house. 

It is 5AM, when he sees the sun. 

At first, he registers how the white walls changed color into pink. They reddened with every minute, the light crawled from the clouds. Through the windows of a house he could see a neighborhood house, it was colored in pink too. 

He tried to stand up, but his back protested. His legs are still shaking, and every muscle in his body feels stiff and weak. All these years of combat training now felt like a joke. 

Grabbing the walls, he stumbled into the kitchen. There he could see more sunlight through the holes in the ceiling. The light was bright: orange sky and blue stripe ripped through the magenta clouds. Under the blue sky everything looked so bleak and dead, and only the stirring sunrises brought color to this small neighborhood. 

He opens the fridge, it looks at him with its rusty and empty insides. He checks the cupboards, and finds an unopened box of Sugar Bombs. Magda loved these stupid cereal, although they were neither nutritious nor tasty. It’s contents looked like a whole Mendeleev table smashed together and coated in sweet artificial syrup. He isn’t even sure if it was a real corn syrup. 

He rips the carton and shoves a hand inside. He doesn’t think if it’s edible, it has been two centuries, and he's expecting to find a nice breakfast. The cereal seemed dry, but obviously isn't crunchy anymore. His hand was shaking, he wasn't sure if he would find any food soon, so he decided to try it, and brought a hand to his mouth and just ate anything what was in his hand. The cereal was soft and disgusting, but they still smell like sugar and corn. 

He wondered, how did they produce it. When did they expired? Memories of Magda made him teary again. He looked at the sun again – it was brighter with every second. Whatever happens with people, the sun will rise up every morning and set in the evening. Suddenly he felt himself trapped in these ruins of his home, so he emerged on the street: the houses was white again, the blue heavy night clouds went away, and the sun crawled up from the trees. 

It was a good start.


	2. Important and quick note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's alive!

Heads up to whoever is reading this

I think I finally found a solution: how to save this thing. I can't sew it into one pile of text, to this will be a collection of drabbles. 

Note from previous chapter states:

The title of the fic is a tribute to Marvel alternative comic-verses.

My uncle had served in the army, but still I have superficial knowledge about wars and I’m really glad for not knowing more than media shows. Please, mind that this is a fiction, based on an imaginary war. There will be supernatural additions, weak science fiction and domestic fluff.

There may be typos and mistakes, I don't have beta and English is my second language.

Will be updated casually.


	3. Meeting Codsworth

Later he finds Codsworth. At first, he doesn’t believe his eyes, but the fellow robot sees him from the other side of the street and surges onto him. If it wasn’t for him, Erik would probably sit in that old tub till the end of times.

Instead, Codsworth suggests him to walk through the old ruins. To the time they kill another pack of disgusting flying bugs, Erik gets hungry again. 

He started his search for food from the neighborhood houses. To the left of his home there lived an elderly couple – Stephen and Ruth. Sometimes their children came to visit them. Stephen loved baseball and could talk about it for hours. Not once Erik found himself with the cold Nuka Cola in their garden, listening to the retelling of recent baseball match. Ruth loved that garden much. The small backyard didn't stop them and they were growing their own vegetables, and Ruth always had her own pumpkin for Halloween. 

Ruth was quiet, but serious lady. The was the unspeakable leader between the neighborhoods. Ruth was the first to greet them, when they moved and inform about best shops around the area. 

Like many other buildings around, their house didn't have any whole window and some rooms on the back was buried under the rubble. Erik carefully moved around – sure, the place survived for two centuries, but broken parts of the roof could fall on his head every minute now. For the most part, the houses were empty, there were moth on the walls and broken pieces of furniture around the decayed floor. 

On the backyard Erik found an amazing thing – between dry yellow grass was laying a gourd. It's leaves are covered with purple spots, but otherwise it looked fine and Erik was getting a bit desperate. 

Erik decided to find any usable dishes. He finds a rusty kettle without a cap, couple of colorful crackles pots and a whole solid frying pan. The pan becomes his greatest treasure so far. On the other side of the street he finds an old rusty water pump. After testing the water on radiation with Pip-boy’s integrated Geiger counter, he finally can drink water without any fear. It still has an aftertaste of iron, but absolutely safe to drink. Next come the newly found kitchenary. Washing the dishes was never his strongest side. Codsworth tries to help with advice and two hundred year old Abraxo cleaning powder, but Erik decides against it. 

He spends half an hour on scraping the rust from the side of the kettle with anything that comes in mind: sand, rock and even Codsworth's blowtorch. It just makes the kettle really hot and black from smoke. Still, it helps to take off most of the rust. He couldn’t find a knife, so he asks Codsworth for help again – and the robot cuts the gourd with his circular saw. 

Logic reminds him that he needs food to function properly and Codsworth doesn't stop babbling about dinner. Together they find a gourd in another Sanctuary neighborhood house. The safety is questionable, but he doesn't have another choice.


	4. Humility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is quite long, comparing to the previous. Next few chapters will be shorter – I have only basic outline for them.
> 
> *Bluebells has a meaning of humility and gratitude.

Erik finds dry bluebells in his garden – Magda’s favorite flowers. She always said Erik's eyes was the color of bluebells. He looks at them, afraid even to touch. But when a couple hours later the radstorm comes, he rushes outside to save flowers, but they've already crumpled and beaten to the ground.

What he feared it the most has finally happened. When you see your friends and mates dying every day, you struggle to close your eyes in the night. You can't stop hearing their voices, but you don't have tears anymore. You can't sleep. That slumber, that he’d fell after he crawled out of the vault hasn’t come to him anymore. 

All Erik wants is silence, but his head is buzzing. Heartbeat throbs in him, pushes the blood through your lungs, knocks in the ribcage and the sound is deafening in the night. Erik tries to count numbers, breaths and beats, but the dreams are ignoring him. So he stays alone in the old bathtub in his neighborhood's kitchen. 

Erik opens his eyes just to meet with a darkness around him. The night has fallen over the Sanctuary, and Erik was consumed by it. There was no sound from outside, not even a wind through the holes in the walls. Codsworth probably went to scavenge another house on the street, and Erik stayed here curling in the bathtub, just his own thoughts to buzz around him. He then slowly turned from his position, and his neck made a painful crack. He helped himself out, stretched his sore legs and checked Pip-boy for a time. 

1:42 AM, just in the middle of the night. Well, at least he managed to sleep for five hours. Now, in the middle of the night, it was hard for him to navigate around – he felt lost and useless. 

Earlier, while scavenging around sanctuary, he found an old vest. It was damaged with time and weather, smelled of mold, but evening winter didn't get through it. Codsworth helped to clean it a bit, but they didn't have any needles or thread to patch it up, so he just left it to dry on the sun and after a day on the air, it started to smell like dry leaves and sand. 

He checked the Pip-boy again, it might has some light adjustment in it, but Erik couldn't find a right button on a touch. The green screen from the device on his left hand barely glowed, but it was better than nothing. He slowly made his way out on the street. For a moment, he made himself still and listened again: nothing - no birds, no crickets, not even gun fire or shouting. Then he looked up. 

Above him, covering the whole whole sky, the stars were spread from one side to another. It struck Erik, that the last time he's seen such illumination, was back in Alaska. Back then, when they were sitting undercover days and walked nights, Erik always used to navigate by the polar star. They should've gone to the different direction, and it always watched his back. 

When he and Magda moved to Boston, it was way more lively town, than the one he met her in. He never struck himself as a romantic, most nights they spent watching movies, not the sky. Magda never complained about lack of walks beside the pond or Erik not bringing flowers on their first date. They went to the late movie airings just because Erik couldn't stand being in the middle of the crowd. But since the late movies was almost always romantic dramas, Magda never complained too. After their late evenings, roads were free, people were sleeping, and Erik felt himself content and almost normal. 

"I'm not that kind of girl, Erik. Who needs flowers, anyway? Better bring me that new multi-tool you've told me about earlier. It will come in handy." 

Now, when he came back home, there were no movies, no car trips, no Magda. He made a move, turned around to tell someone about the stars above, but there wasn't even a wind blow to touch his hair. The polar star was right above him, and he faced it for the first time like this. The shiver came out of nowhere, crawled from inside his spine up, across his shoulders and sit as a limp in his throat. 

"Did you get a good sleep, sir?" 

The voice on the distance was so sudden, Erik leapt and hit his hand on the mailbox. 

"Shit." 

The Codsworth appeared in a cloud of dust and blinking lights. 

"Have I frightened you? Oh, I'm so sorry." 

"It's okay," Erik rubbed a hit hand, and found an outline of the mailbox, hitting the stand with a leg. "I just got distracted." 

Codsworth cares about his well-being, so he doesn't leave him for long. For Erik it’s like he’s five and back into daycare; eventually he snaps, tells him to leave. 

Codsworth is a machine, but somehow Erik still feels sour after his outburst.


	5. Tension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Concord. Still warming up a bit. It'll take some time for Charles to appear.

First time in combat, he feels scared and excited at the same time. Preston takes him to talk without ears, asking if he needs help. Erik doesn't understand / Preston tells him he should use every opportunity he has: grab everything that he sees on a street without supervising. 

"Are you...do you actually tell me to steal?"

"You can't steal from the dead and this shiny power armor is just standing here waiting for someone to take it."

He can’t argue with that, sounds pretty convinsing.

He waited all his life.

On the frontline, he waited for an order. Then waited for a target for hours. Then he waited for another order. It's not so hard as it may sound. You get a task, you wait, you get it done, you come back to get another task. Simple as that. Go, wait, kill. Repeat. There were days when they'd just observed with a finger on a trigger. That was a bit harder, but nothing impossible, really. 

Until one day they'd been hit by friendly fire. It happens a lot and it rarely spoke about: it can be overwhelming for people. One small mistake and he lost his partner under the attack, they just thought it’s someone else. They said it happens, you know. And Erik really wanted to understand, but he couldn't leave a position. So his partner was slowly dying right before him and he couldn’t do anything except saying goodbyes. 

The second time, with his wife he doesn't even have any time. That's why later he will do anything to prevent Charles from dying, eat any smelly stuff and carry him five kilometres in his hands.

In order to defeat the enemy, you must observe and learn from him. Or better observe and learn from anyone: enemy or friend.

He waited for so long, now it was the time to act.

The power armor was right beside him. Down on the street, raiders were still trying to break into the museum and people inside were still firing back. In a moment, he hears the vertibird and his comrades shouting for support, but he shakes his head again – nothing; just a ghost from the past. Hands worked automatically – he could switch all the controls with his eyes closed if he had to do it in the darkness. The heavy armor tugged on his left leg, there wasn't any protection on the right side, but the exo-skeleton still worked, so at least he didn’t need to drag the leg behind.

The closest way down was to jump from the roof, he tries to put all his weight on his right leg and he almost succeeds. He feels vibrations all over the body, left reg without the cover hurts and trembles, but it’s not broken and this is good news.

As promised, Preston took a position on a balcony, to make a fire support. He nodded and  
"Here it comes!"  
For ten years, Erik lived on war, he lived with it. When he came back to his new home, he brought it with him – not the best decision in his life, but he had all his life to make it right. Hours, days of waiting, weeks in radio silence, months of training could never prepare him for this. The ugly face of post nuclear wasteland. Don’t get him wrong, Erik liked dinosaurs when he was little, but never expected to meet one of them one day face to face. It roared and charged on him without even saying ‘hello’ and he almost expected it.

Right this moment, a rusty right hand of power armor screeched and clanked on a chest-piece, Erik stepped back, then made another stumble and got hit into the shop window. Probably a good cover, no time to look for other options anyway. 

It was his lucky day, he just tuned out the world and felt how tension bleeds through him with every bullet coming out of the gun. The beast dies, everyone lives. 

"Oh my god, you're bleeding! You alright, mate?"

He heard others say something else, but still felt a bit shaken.

"Uh? I... Ah, yes. It's okay.

"No, man, it is not okay. You've got blood on your head.

“Movie doesn't show how if you shoot someone within about 10 feet of them you'll probably get their blood on you, and have to wash it off later.” Erik heard himself say.

“Except this blood is yours and it’s not inside.”

Or maybe it wasn’t just tension after all.


End file.
